Archive for: July 2009

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the “summer slow down” that many businesses experience during the summer months. While not all businesses experience this, it can be a serious problem for those that do have to deal with fewer customers, slower sales cycles, and decreasing revenue during the summer.

If your business happens to be in a “summer slow down,” here are some things you can try to help your business pick up activity and minimize the effect this time of year has on your bottom line.

1. Create a mini-plan: If you don’t already have a marketing plan in place, make one now. We are only a little more than half-way through the year, which is plenty of time to put together a focused, effective plan to guide your efforts for the rest of the year. Include some low-cost or no-cost activities, like e-marketing campaigns or web site updates, that will provide you with a lot of bang for your buck.

2. Try social networking: Not on Facebook yet? Not yet tweeting on Twitter? If not, this may be the perfect time to give it a try! Although accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter are free to set up, they will cost you some time each week to interact with the people in your network, plus the time it takes to integrate your accounts to work well together. If you are not comfortable with setting this up yourself, hire a firm to help get you started. The long-term benefits will outweigh the upfront costs to get going with this new, scorching-hot marketing trend.

3. Send an e-survey: One of the best ways to refresh interest in your business and show customers that you are listening to their needs is to send out an e-survey. You can use one of the many low-cost online services such as Vertical Response or Constant Contact to create an email survey asking for feedback about your products and services. Consider giving respondents a money-saving coupon or free gift as a thank you for participating in the survey.

4. Write an article: Take advantage of the slower pace of summer and write an article or two. Don’t use any sales-y language or marketing fluff; instead, give readers truly useful information that showcases your expertise and experience. “How-to” articles or “Top-10” lists are good examples of useful articles that are popular with readers. Post the article on your blog, use it as new content on your web site, include it in your monthly newsletter, and syndicate it on an article submission site such as GoArticles.com to get great exposure for your article and promote your business at the same time.

5. Have a summer e-sale: Create a special offer or sale on something you haven’t promoted in a while, or offer something unexpected, and send it as an email campaign. Make sure the offer has a beginning and ending date to create urgency, and be as creative as you can when promoting it. Make your email campaign especially colorful or eye-catching, and be sure to create a special landing page on your web site to steer customers directly toward making a purchase.

Just because summer may be a slower time for your business doesn’t mean that it is impossible pick up the pace! By taking steps to boost your marketing this summer, you may discover new ways to get your customers’ attention and improve your revenue all year long!

For small businesses today, the web is a significant tool for promotion, advertising, lead generation, customer relationship management, and many other business-related activities. But there’s more to a successful web site than just the web site itself. For instance, you may have the best site ever built, but if nobody visits the site, how does it help your business? And conversely - if you have a constant stream of potential customers flocking to your web site only to be disappointed or dissatisfied, you have gained nothing (and may have even lost credibility in the eyes of your visitors!).

The fact is that your web site must have both halves of this equation right - a content-rich, up-to-date web site AND a steady stream of quality web traffic  in order to really work for your business.

Party Time
Imagine that you have just been asked to put together a very swanky black-tie charity fundraiser for your favorite charity (with all associated costs donated by sponsors). In order for this event to be successful, you will need to get the word out to lots of potential guests – in fact; the more guests who attend, the more money you will raise for your charity! But of course if you do not let guests know about the party, then certainly no one will show up.

Of course, there are many ways you could promote the event. One way would be to send out beautiful, engraved invitations complete with a self-addressed, stamped R.S.V.P. card to a list of previous, wealthy donors. Another might be to place ads on targeted web sites or in local publications. I suppose you could even put flyers up on the grocery store bulletin boards with those little tear-off phone numbers to call for tickets. And then there’s the whole “word-of-mouth” approach where you tell your friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc., and everyone spreads the word to their friends, co-workers, and neighbors.

By now, you probably know where I’m going with this metaphor, that the charity fundraiser is like your web site, and the”invitations” are like the ways in which you can drive traffic to your site.

On the Guest List
To carry the metaphor a bit further, the engraved invitations would be like the quality inbound links that you get from sources like search engines, article syndication, authority sites, etc. And the grocery store flyers would be like the lower-quality inbound links that come from reciprocal linking or less-than-authoritative sites and directories (still somewhat valuable, but not likely to raise as much money for your charity!).

The social networking component is easy to spot in this metaphor, of course, and would operate in much the same way for your web site. By using your social network of friends, co-workers, etc., you create the possibility that your network will in turn share the information with their own network of people, who may then continue to spread the word further through out their social networks.

An Affair to Remember
So now let’s say that you have put together a wonderful, perfect event that provides something for everyone, is inviting and memorable, and is on track to become the most successful charity fundraiser ever produced. Then the big night comes, but only a few people show up - what a disaster! After spending all that time, money, and effort, what a waste that ultimately, the event fell short of fulfilling its purpose of raising lots of money for the charity.

Although a worse scenario might be that after working so hard on spreading the word and getting out the invitations, you ran out of time to adequately plan for the event, ordered take-out pizza served on paper plates, and forgot to complete the paperwork necessary to accept donations. In this case, you would have not only failed to raise money for your charity, you would have probably offended and disappointed your guests to the point where they would not be interested in attending the event again next year.

Getting It Right
The moral of the story, of course, is that to make your web site successful for your business, you must pay attention to both parts of the equation; the web site itself, and driving good, quality web traffic to the site on a regular basis. Your web site needs to have solid, useful content that provides value to visitors, and it must be updated regularly so they have a reason to come back (and to trust you). But driving quality traffic to your web site is equally important; since you have 0 chance of converting visitors or making sales with your web site if people cannot find your site in the search engines or other trusted sources online.

By now you surely know that your small business needs to have a quality web site that gets updated regularly and provides real value to customers and potential customers. Just be sure that you are balancing that with adequate online promotion, e-marketing initiatives, and search engine optimization to bring a much-needed, steady flow of web traffic to your site.

Have you ever received an email with a great offer for something you really need, or saw a Google click ad for exactly what you’ve been searching for – then with great anticipation, clicked the link for more information only to land on the home page of the company’s web site?

It’s sure happened to me before. I’ve clicked on a link for a specific offer or ad, only to land on a home page where I instantly became lost. Where’s the offer I just saw? Which link should I try first? Where am I supposed to look, and how many levels will I need to click through before I find the offer, if I ever find it?

This is exactly the experience that you do NOT want your customers to have when they arrive at your web site! If you are lucky enough to get visitors to take action from an email campaign, click ad, or social networking link, be sure to provide them with instant reassurance that they are in the right place by creating a specific landing page that matches the campaign or offer.

Good landing pages contain only one subject, eliminating any distraction and clutter that isn’t relevant to the topic. For example, if you send an email campaign advertising a free trial offer, don’t send visitors to the home page of your site, or even to the product page of your site – your visitor is expecting to land on a page that talks about the free trial offer, and how to sign up! On the landing page, it’s fine to include some bullet points that highlight the benefits of your product, or add some brief sales information about the product. But mostly, you want to use your landing page to give details about the free trial, and provide visitors with a way to sign up and get started.

Here are some other tips to help you create focused, clear, and effective landing pages:

1. Match the landing page to your campaign or ad. Use the same terminology, repeat your keywords, and make the design and images look the same or similar to what was used in your campaign. All of these are visual triggers to reassure visitors that they are in the right place.
2. One page, one topic. Don’t introduce a second subject on the page, or try to introduce additional products or services. Stick to a single topic, and be sure to clear away any obstacles that could cause visitors to become distracted or lose their focus.
3. Include a clear call to action. Specifically tell your visitors what you want them to do as a result of landing on the page, then give them an easy way to take action (provide an online form, toll-free phone number, shopping cart links, etc.).
4. State your privacy policy. Make sure your privacy policy is visible on your landing page (or at least provide a link to your policy) so visitors know what you will or will not do with the information that they may be providing to you.
5. Add some testimonials. A few well-placed testimonials on the landing page helps build up your credibility and make visitors feel more at ease about taking action.
6. Be transparent. Make sure your landing page has all of your company information and contact info included; preferably with a similar look that matches the branding on your regular web pages.
7. Remove your regular navigation. The menu system that you use on your web site shouldn’t be included on a landing page. By including your navigation, you invite your visitors to jump off the landing page and onto your regular site before they have taken action on your offer.
8. Keep the most important elements above the fold. Don’t make visitors read through a lot of content or scroll down the page to discover how to take action. Include the most important elements near the top of the page where visitors can see them immediately.

By creating specific landing pages, you can help steer your visitors toward taking the action you want them to take, while providing them with the exact information they are expecting. When visitors arrive at your landing page because of an email campaign or ad, they have already “pre-qualified” themselves by showing interest in your offer. Be sure to meet their expectations with a landing page that will answer their questions, make them feel comfortable, and compel them to take action. Simply linking them to your web site’s home page is too overwhelming – don’t make them guess what to do or where to go. Instead, give them a specific landing page that matches your offer and leads them directly to a conversion.

Although many companies are warming up to social networking as an effective marketing tool, it’s important to remember that social networking is most powerful as a marketing tool when it is integrated with other marketing initiatives, such as email campaigns. People use social networking sites to pass along information and share with others, so it can be useful to set up your social networking profiles to “play nice” with your email campaigns to improve your results and overall marketing effectiveness.

Integration is Key
Integrating your social profiles with your email marketing initiatives can be as simple as including links to your Facebook business page or Twitter account in your email signature, or as sophisticated as using a “Share With Your Network” (SWYN) button in your email campaigns, allowing recipients to share your emails with others in their networks right from the message itself. Another option is to include special “share” links available from social networking sites (e.g., http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.yoursite.com/email.htm for Facebook) that lets users share your email message with their own contacts with just one mouse click.

One of the key benefits of integrating your social networking profiles with your email campaigns is that you give your email campaigns a chance to reach countless additional people that you may not have otherwise reached. The viral nature of social media means that when users find information that they like, they share it with the people in their own networks, who in turn share it with their contact lists, and so on. By integrating social media with email campaigns, you can make it easy for your recipients to propel your message out to their social network contacts, with the chance your message will travel even further from there.

Make It Two-Way
In addition to using email campaigns to promote your social media profiles, you can also give social network users the chance to opt-in to your email list as well. For instance, you can add your email signup box to your Facebook business page using FBML (Facebook Mark Up Language). Or, you could add a link to an email signup page on your web site to your profiles on LinkedIn or Twitter. The idea is to make it easy (and obvious) for people to join your mailing list and opt-in to receiving communication from your business on a regular basis.

Getting the Word Out
The content of your email campaigns can be re-used in your social media profiles, which is a great way to help your message find its way to new audiences. For instance, if you are sending out monthly coupons to your email list, why not add the coupons to your Facebook business page as well? Or you could use Twitter to announce the coupons at the beginning of the month (including a link to the coupons on your site), then send a Twitter reminder a few days before the coupons expire.

For business events, email and social media are both very effective for promotion, but are even more powerful when used together. For example, after sending out an event invitation via email to your list, you could post the information as an “Event” on both Facebook and LinkedIn, and use Twitter to broadcast a link back to the Events, or even include a link to more information, the event location or maps, or online registration form on your web site.

Social Media is Definitely Here to Stay
Whether you’re new to social media or you’re already using it as a marketing tool for your business, you can make your email campaigns work harder by integrating them with your social media profiles. Integration means that your marketing efforts can be centralized and shared; for example, making your Facebook business page “talk to” your Twitter account and your LinkedIn profile, as well as showing off your latest email coupon offers and e-newsletter articles.

By integrating your social networking profiles with your email marketing campaigns, you can take advantage of the viral nature of social media and potentially reach new, untapped customers and potential customers, and re-use your email messages across new channels. Combine the two, and you can make your online marketing even more effective than by using either channel on its own.